Month: August 2017

“How Would Churchill Tweet?” appeared in Nation­al Review, 12 August 2017.

Since Pres­i­dent Trump has tak­en office, the pub­lic has quick­ly learned to get its polit­i­cal news from a nov­el source—namely, the President’s Twit­ter account.

The move to this plat­form rep­re­sents a shift in the nature of pol­i­tics, both for good and for ill. Trump might be among the first polit­i­cal lead­ers to use this medi­um to attack oppo­nents or make major announce­ments. He is cer­tain­ly not the first to uti­lize the kind of brevi­ty the plat­form requires to make his points.

Such brevi­ty also char­ac­ter­ized the rhetor­i­cal style of Win­ston Churchill, whose wit, humor and insight com­ple­ment­ed his deci­sive and effec­tive polit­i­cal lead­er­ship.…

David Fran­co, review­ing the film Churchill, star­ring Bri­an Cox, rais­es ques­tions he says every­one should be ask­ing. “Isn’t the abil­i­ty to accept one’s mis­takes part of what makes a man a good leader? …. To what extent should we rely [on] past expe­ri­ences in order to min­i­mize mis­takes in the future? These are the ques­tions that make a bad movie like Churchill worth see­ing.”

Well, I won’t be see­ing this bad movie. Described as “per­verse fan­ta­sy” by his­to­ri­an Andrew Roberts, it joins a recent spate of slop­py Churchill bio-pics that favor skewed car­i­ca­tures over his­tor­i­cal fact.…

Read­er Brent Hinde writes about my Hud­son book, The Clas­sic Post­war Years (1977, reprint­ed 1993). Very kind of him, since it’s the first men­tion of that book in decades.

Recent­ly at an estate sale I picked up the book and found it an excel­lent read. On page 38 is a ter­rif­ic sketch of a car that should have been built, rather than the design man­age­ment chose. My ques­tion is: Who drew that sketch? Are there more draw­ings like that in exis­tence? It would make a great guide for a project car.

Hudson’s styling team

The draw­ing (top) shows a crisper shape than the pro­duc­tion 1948 Hud­son.…